Friday, May 27, 2011

Oh, I have been unkind to myself. In fact, for now, Tim is looking at the scale for me, so that number doesn't throw me into a panic, so the panic doesn't throw me into a self-destructive spiral.

I keep repeating: I am still 15 pounds lighter than I was a year ago, even if my size 8s are a little tighter than they were. I am much stronger. I haven't binged in months. I haven't once made myself vomit. I haven't given up.

But I think I have forgotten the value of small steps. An extra ten minutes of hooping or jumping rope or cycling every day, a few minutes spent on strength training or core work. I've forgotten the value of moderation in eating, forgotten that skipping meals always makes everything worse. I've not bothered to eat properly on the days that I spend at work.

Tonight I took some small steps. I cycled a few laps back and forth over the bridge (and its infamous ramp). I got espresso at Transcend, and took some pictures. I came home and drank beer out of my preferred beer glass. I am determined to return to the spirit in which I started this project last summer. I want to take care of myself.

For the next seven days, I am going to post pictures of all my meals. For real. I am going to take some time to exercise (in addition to my short commute to work) every day. I am going to step on the scale every day. I am going to work on my still-sore shins. I am going to drink lots of water. If I mess up, I am going to forget it and keep going.

So, forgive me while this space morphs temporarily into a weight loss blog.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

just as we are in the middle of spackling the wooden cubes we built and designed last spring,

just as we are getting ready to prime and paint them Mayan blue and dove grey,

just as I am learning to make sourdough rye,

just as Tim has started a blog,

just as our leeks are establishing themselves in the flowerbeds,

just as I seem to have developed abs,

Tim comes home from his workshop in his parents' basement with a present for me. Appropriately, a sewing box. Made of pale stiff spruce and hard, purplish walnut, with a Japanese lid that slides to seal itself, and American dove-tailed corners. Clunky and graceful at once.

It delights me.

We had been watching each other slow to a stop. It is the first thing in a long time unmistakably stamped with all the specifics of Tim's consideration, skill, and taste, and there is nothing unsure about it. We have no more fear of becoming stagnant these days. We are reading and writing. We are taking in and putting out. We are learning and producing. (This must be the way to become at home in the world, like building a fortress of cereal boxes to establish one's presence at the breakfast table.)

I eat oatmeal for breakfast. I make it on the hot plate and put skimmed milk on it.I eat it alone.I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.It's consistency is such that it is better for your mental health if somebody eats it with you.That is why I often think up an imaginary companion to have breakfast with.Possibly it is even worse to eat oatmeal with an imaginary companion.Nevertheless, yesterday morning I ate my oatmeal with John Keats.Keats said I was right to invite him: due to its glutinous texture, gluey lumpishness, hint of slime, and unusual willingness to disintegrate, oatmeal must never be eaten alone.He said it is perfectly OK, however, to eat it with an imaginary companion, and he himself had enjoyed memorable porridges with Edmund Spenser and John Milton.He also told me about writing the "Ode to a Nightingale."He wrote it quickly, he said, on scraps of paper, which he then stuck in his pocket, but when he got home, he couldn't figure out the order of the stanzas, and he and a friend spread the papers on a table, and they made some sense of them, but he isn't sure to this day if they got it right.He still wonders about the occasional sense of drift between stanzas, and the way here and there a line will do into the configuration of a Moslem at prayer, then raise itself up and peer about, then lay itself down slightly off the mark, causing the poem to move forward with God's reckless wobble.He said someone told him that later in life Wordsworth heard about the scraps of paper on the table, and tried shuffling some stanzas of his own, but only made matters worse.When breakfast was over, John recited "To Autumn."He recited it slowly, with much feeling, and he articulated the words lovingly, and his odd accent sounded sweet.He didn't offer the story of writing "To Autumn," I doubt if there is much of one.But he did say the sight of a just-harvested oat field got him started and two of the lines, "For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells" and "Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours," came to him while eating oatmeal alone.I can see him - drawing a spoon through the stuff, gazing into the glimmering furrows, muttering - and it occurs to me:maybe there is no sublime, only the shining of the amnion's tatters.For supper tonight I am going to have a baked potato left over from lunch.I am aware that a leftover baked potato can be damp, slippery, and simultaneously gummy and crumbly,and therefore I am going to invite Patrick Kavanaugh to join me.

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Anyone can tell you there’s no more road to rideEveryone will tell you there’s no place to hideThere’s no laws or rules to enchant your lifeBut the ones who didn’t make it,The ones who couldn’t take itWere so glad they made it out alive

Everyone loves the funEveryone comes backIn the wind I crouchI want to die

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the riverYou can hear the boats go byyou can spend the night beside herAnd you know she's half-crazybut that's why you want to be thereAnd she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from ChinaAnd just when you mean to tell herthat you have no love to give herthen she gets you on her wavelengthand she lets the river answerthat you've always been her loverAnd you want to travel with herand you want to travel blindand you know she will trust youfor you've touched her perfect bodywith your mind

And Jesus was a sailorwhen he walked upon the waterAnd he spent a long time watchingfrom his lonely wooden towerAnd when he knew for certainonly drowning men could see himhe said All men will be sailors thenuntil the sea shall free themBut he himself was brokenlong before the sky would openForsaken, almost humanhe sank beneath your wisdom like a stoneAnd you want to travel with himand you want to travel blindAnd you think maybe you'll trust himfor he's touched your perfect bodywith his mind

Now Suzanne takes your handand she leads you to the riverShe's wearing rags and feathers rom Salvation Army counters And the sun pours down like honey on our lady of the harbour And she shows you where to look among the garbage and the flowers There are heroes in the seaweed There are children in the morning They are leaning out for love and they will lean that way forever while Suzanne holds the mirror And you want to travel with her and you want to travel blind and you know that you can trust her for she's touched your perfect body with her mind.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Back in February, I made a slightly risky and unwise trip. At six in the morning during the coldest week of the winter, I showed up (before all the other interested parties) at the door of an unknown man's apartment, handed over six hundred dollars in cash, and walked her seven kilometers home like a little horse. She's all mine now.

I began complaining about the winter in October. And I continued to complain through six months of cold, right up until the last snow fall a week ago melted upon touching down and I felt relieved.

The truth is, I find the summer just as hard. With school over, I am skittering wildly. What to make, to do, to think about now? For the past eight months, my life has been on hold. Everything from dentist appointments to sewing projects entices and frightens. And then there is the Real Work - writing - ten times better and worse than all the rest. But perhaps the most terrifying thing is food.

I don't need to mention my history again. A imagined slip of control can prove disastrous for me. Even an imagined slip of the kinder, more reasonable and forgiving control I have been aiming to keep on this area of my life. Suddenly the fact that I have not weighed myself in over a month fills me with dread. If I eat too much, I want to 'make it up' with starving or exercise, an entirely pointless way, if I want to stay healthy. (And I do, I do.) I've been surprised by the way my haphazard shift-schedule makes it difficult to eat. If I'm not home to cook for myself, I eat what is convenient, feel guilty later, and try to avoid further intake for as long as possible (eventually succumbing of course). I feel like I am back exactly where I started last August.

It's all bullshit. I've already forgotten the 5km I ran last month, the 40 km I biked last week, the way I've stuck to my early suppers and gotten my vegetables. Triumphs.

I cannot treat myself like this. On May 25, I'll step back on the scale. Until then, the plan is as simple as it has ever been:

- no running - my shins need some time- no skipping meals- no eating after 7pm- lots of water- biking every day (I have to get to know Annalena)- core work every day- hula hooping - vegetables- vitamins